Words Puzzle over Oddly Shaped Poem Pieces

By Curtis Williams

Using a measure of baby-book blueprints as a guide, I squared off in line with some rusted tools of time and with the help of a few weather-treated emotions. I built a solid dreamlike structure, a home for those cherished memories that, upon completion, defines me.

As a shoestring poet, every subject that piques my poetic interest and has the nerve to come into contact with my emotionally charged, multicolored pen has been treated with as much respect and honesty as my talent will allow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514426562

Curtis Williams

author bio coming soon

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Curtis Williams.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015918951

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-2658-6

                Softcover        978-1-5144-2657-9

                eBook             978-1-5144-2656-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/21/2015

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Contents

The Border Pieces

Days Were Taken and Savored in Turn

Black, a Fingertip Rainbow of Color

Simple

As an Ant

From a French Quarter-Inch Black Hole

Sparks under Third Rail

Dogmen from Mars

As I Turn to Rhyming Verse

I've Been in a State of Deflated Despair

Shape-Shifting Goth Grandmas

Numbered by Eternity

We Open Our Eyes and See

From Gleaming Cocktail Shakers

Dangling a Hot Boxed Camel between Split Lips

From Eye Level

8 East

Blood

Cast Not My Likeness

Far Above

Blindly Chipping Away At Seasoned Mortar

Loyalists, Prophets, Lunatic Kings

As It Slowly Snaked Down My Throat

A Minor Shakespearean Tragedy

Easy Do I

Takes Flight on the Wings of a Four-Letter Word

Breaking Down This Slab of Quarried Stone

I Fell in Line

God

Pink Footprints for the Record

Worn and Needy around Bound Edges

Winter Trees Stark to Russian Fiction

At Home with Jimmy and His Mother

Adrenaline Runs Flat Out along Hard Baseboards

In Order to Keep My Balance

As Blind as a Bat

Inside a Large Glass House

Rain

Snow

Ice

Vincent

Sneaking around on Graveyard Toes

Why Did Daddy Hit Mommy?

Fools Crown the Very Top of the World

Scenes inside a Darkened Box: Lens to a Camera Obscura

A Stubbed-Toe Ballet in the Dark

Ummagumma Speak

Jim Morrison

You Held My Hand while I Slept

Tight Wiring

Tanaquil Le Clercq

Sidewalks

Stone Dates Last

Walking around the House in My Stockinged Feet

For I Could Do Nothing Else for the Day

Pure Yellow Pops the Dandelion Tops

The Flowers Were Arranged Beautifully

Batons Raise the Conductor's Soft Rain Flowers White

Mother Kisses Tired Eyes

Construction Paper Cutouts

Creation (Second Version)

How Deep Should I Go?

Grief

Running along Concrete Armatures

Lattice Cling Climbs

Coffee Shop--Cool Kerouacs

Hedgerows Tall Green in Fence Lines Stand

Tap-Tap in Reply

Inside This Turn Twisted Out

Because It's Only Ten Till Two

Look for Me

Lost to a Slaughter of Colors

To Laughter This Middle Day

Pieces Leftover from a Different Puzzle

The only qualitative difference between myself and all the other cuckoos that inhabit this

Using a measure of baby-book blueprints as a guide, I squared off in line with some rusted tools of time

In a back, forward, nearly upright position, I start my nightly prayer. The words I use are still new to my

Tilting my head forward slightly, I slowly begin to move it in a circular motion.

To motivate a nation's need for swift justice, political half-truths find

Unlike the nightmare dance of physical pain that waits in anticipation of oblivion,

If you choose to view the world while bent over backwards, with your head turned completely around,

To clog-dance with the free-spirited angels, to cluck jokingly under

To explore the vast complexities of the known universe. Their galactic mysteries will have to wait a

Devouring the world in large spicy chunks, I briefly touched all the misspelled bases with a mixture of

The only way I can accurately describe my handwriting is that it has degenerated into line after line of

The first stepping stone in crossing the river of applied knowledge is the first word

For time in its inch-by-inch wisdom imparts nearly all that is needed. Sharpening my

When my mind finally swept away all